How to Smear a Washington Think Tank

Suddenly lots of people are asking whether calling someone an "Israel-firster" is anti-Semitic. The occasion for these reflections is a controversy--the
subject of a Washington Postpiece yesterday--surrounding the liberal think tank the Center for American Progress. The Post piece noted a "dispute with
several Jewish organizations over charges that some center staffers have publicly used language that could be construed as anti-Israel or even
anti-Semitic."

Don't be misled by the attention being given to the term "Israel-firster" into thinking that it's the real issue here. That term was used by a single,
very junior CAP staffer on his personal twitter account, and he apologized weeks ago. So if people ostensibly complaining about the 'Israel-firster'
thing are still after CAP scalps, we know that the issue must go deeper.

Here is the real issue: Some people at CAP who haven't used the term Israel-firster have committed a different sin--criticizing, sometimes
harshly, the policies of Israel. And some defenders of those policies find it easier to stigmatize critics than to answer them.

This agenda was made surprisingly clear in an indictment of CAP that appeared this week on the New York Post op-ed page. The author, Commentary staffer
Alana Goodman, reported that "three leading Jewish groups--the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the Simon Wiesenthal
Center--have accused CAP and its staff of publishing 'anti-Israel,' 'hateful' and 'toxic anti-Jewish' material." Yet when she got around to particulars,
the complaints were mainly about the position of CAP staffers on substantive policy issues.

Goodman's only quote from the ADL is this one about things that have appeared on CAP-affiliated blogs: "Most of their blogs come from a perspective of
blaming Israel for the lack of progress in Israeli-Palestinian affairs and minimizing or rationalizing the Iranian threat." I doubt that's the way
these bloggers would characterize their opinions, but in any event we're here clearly in the realm of the kind of policy analysis that is, I had always
thought, what think tanks do. Or is Abe Foxman, head of the ADL, saying that you're anti-Semitic, or anti-Israel, if you judge that a nuclear-armed
Iran wouldn't launch a suicidal strike against Israel? Or if you judge that Israel has missed as many (or more) peacemaking opportunities as the
Palestinians have? Sign me up, Abe.

As for the indictments of CAP by the American Jewish Committee and the Simon Wiesenthal Center: I scanned Goodman's piece for substantive elaboration,
but pretty much all I found was more name calling. There did at first seem to be one new issue raised in this quote from the AJC's Jason Isaacson:
"References to Israeli 'apartheid' or 'Israel-firsters' are so false and hateful they reveal an ugly bias no serious policy center can countenance."
Apartheid? Who said anything about apartheid? It turns out the 'apartheid' line comes from the same personal twitter account of that same young CAP
staffer (who no longer works for CAP, by the way). Again, we're not talking about anything that was published or said under CAP's auspices.

The only actual quotation in Goodman's indictment that fits that description is a blog post written by Matt Duss immediately after the Turkish
flotilla raid. It called the Gaza blockade, and the occupation of the West Bank, a "moral abomination." It's true that this is a moral judgment, not
policy analysis. But people at think tanks that I suspect Goodman and Foxman and Isaacson feel more fondly toward--such as the American Enterprise
Institute and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies--routinely spew out condemnatory moral judgments. And not just toward people in countries they
want to attack, but also toward people who disagree with them about whether to attack those countries. (In fact, if you disagree too fiercely, people
may start insinuating that you're anti-Semitic!)

Is it anti-Semitic, or even anti-Israel, to call the Israeli occupation a moral abomination? I'm not Jewish, so I always feel awkward weighing in on
the question of what constitutes anti-Semitism. Instead I turned to someone who is not only Jewish, but is also an Israeli who served in the occupied
territory as a lieutenant and is still in the Israeli army reserve. His name is Mikhael Manekin, and he's co-director of a group of Israeli veterans
called Breaking the Silence, which tries to convey to Israelis the human costs of the occupation. When I asked him about the "moral abomination" line,
he rendered a crisp opinion and then went on to discuss the parallels he sees between the attacks on CAP in America and attacks on Breaking the Silence
in Israel:

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